


Olive my Heart

by anemicloser



Category: The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, leotavian, may contain more characters as we go on only time will tell, pizza boy au is something everyone should have in their life, sorry not sorry for the weird pairing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-19
Updated: 2015-11-20
Packaged: 2018-03-18 14:37:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3573347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anemicloser/pseuds/anemicloser
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pizza has many uses. Mostly sustenance, but who can deny its power over bringing people together?</p>
<p>Octavian is an overachiever and a cranky frat boy. Leo sleeps through most of his classes and gets by as a pizza delivery boy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In The Mood for a Pizza You

**Author's Note:**

> Forgive me for my weird pairing.  
> I don't really have anything to say for myself.
> 
> Originally written as a one shot, but screw it, I want to write more. Hopefully I actually do this.

For the past three weeks, Octavian's main source of sustenance came from some cheap pizza that tasted suspiciously like cardboard. Which, when you think about it, was probably three weeks too many, considering he'd gotten sick off the tough, yet somehow still chewy, crust about two slices into the first one. 

Normally that would stop someone from, say, ordering enough of that pizza to keep him going for three weeks. 

Normally.

Octavian kept ordering even though he'd yet to find a way to make it taste any better. Eating it cold, reheating it, adding various toppings; nothing helped. He'd tried just about everything under the sun, and yet, it still tasted like slightly cheesy, somewhat saucy cardboard.

Octavian turned from all the individually bagged, leftover slices piled high in his fridge and heaved a great sigh. Nothing to eat but stacks of sad leftovers. And, yeah, no, he wasn't about to start on that. With another sigh, this one more in defeat, he picked his phone up off the counter, flipped through his contacts and dialed that familiar number.

"Oo-oo-olympian pizza. Divine, so fine, always on time. What can I get you?" You could practically hear the smile in his voice.

Octavian cleared his throat.

"You're at work again," He'd hope he would be. Maybe. He wouldn't admit it outloud. "I'm starting to think you never leave. No social life?"

"Says the guy who orders pizza like, every other day. At 10:30. While he's studying. The usual?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure? For just .75 cents more, you could spice up your life with--"

"I'm sure."

"Really sure?"

"Yes."

"Really, really--"

"Yes!" Octavian pinched the bridge of his nose, already feeling that he'd made a horrible mistake. Which he probably had. He didn't even want the pizza. 

"Alright, Mr. Plain Cheese, Light Sauce. Can't blame me for trying." There was a pause and Octavian assumed he was scribbling down his order. "Alright, so. You already know the damage and I already know you've chosen the debit card as your weapon. I know where you live-- Sorry, creepy? Anyway, so, yeah, 45 minutes give or take. Might take longer than normal just because."

"Yeah, that's fine-- Just because?" Octavian crinkled his nose, leaning up against the counter, "What do you mean--"  
Before he even had the chance finish his question, there was an abrupt click on the other side of the line, and Octavian growled in irritation. Whatever. Whatever, he wasn't going to be angry about it. There wasn't any reason to since he didn't even want the soggy, cardboad-y pizza. He lowered his phone, staring at it with a furrowed brow, and slipped it back into his pocket. However long Leo the Pizza Boy wanted to take was fine with him.

\------

45 minutes ticked by at an agonizing pace. You know, not that Octavian was counting or testing how long it actually took for 1 minute to go by. (It felt like more than 60 seconds, but he was wrong each time he recounted.) Tapping his pen impatiently, Octavian looked down at the notebook he had yet to write in. 

Though most of his day was spent studying and doing schoolwork, 10:30 pm had always been his favorite time to sit down, spread out, and hit the books. With the exception of Fridays and Saturdays, which were party nights, the house settled down around 10. Everyone was either asleep, or out, or in their own space and not invading his. He'd bring his books downstairs, spread his binders and textbooks all across the table, and he'd get right to work. He'd only stop for snacks. Although, since he'd started ordering pizza, he had a lot more trouble getting started before he stopped.

He chewed anxiously on the cap of his pen, counting yet another minute down, before what he was doing fully dawned on him. This was stupid. He was stupid. Here he was, with a big test coming up, and he was spending his time oh-so-wisely by staring at the clock, waiting for a stupid delivery boy to show up with his stupid pizza that was only marginally better when it was warm than it was cold. He'd really hit a new low. With yet another sigh of defeat, and maybe irritation, he took his pen from his mouth and placed the tip against paper. This needed to get done. It was worth a good chunk of his--

The doorbell rang, roughly 10 minutes later than usual, and Octavian jumped up so fast he nearly knocked his chair over. About time. He smoothed over is baggy, oversized sweater and combed his fingers through his straw-colored hair. Looking the right amount of 'I-don't-care' and 'I-might-be-naturally-good-looking' wasn't easy when you did care and you weren't all that hot, but he tried to make it work for him. He was usually somewhere like, 'I-look-good-for-four-hours-of-sleep.'

He pulled open the door, making sure he didn't look too eager to see Leo the Pizza Boy's familiar face.  
There he stood, leaning so coolly against the door frame, pizza box resting in his hand. When the door opened, he looked up and he flashed that mischievous grin Octavian's way. He waggled his eyebrows, like that was supposed to be cute, and he said, "Large cheese pizza, light sauce, and tasty Mexican on the side?"

Octavian raised his eyebrow, looking largely unimpressed.

"You know. For the ladies." Leo added a little wink and a click of his tongue to fill the awkward silence. It didn't do much to help with the awkward.

"This is a fraternity."

"Oh, yeah. Oops." He didn't sound very concerned, "Anyway, here's your pizza. No way, man, no card." Using the hand that wasn't precariously balancing a pizza, Leo swatted away Octavian's debit card as he tried to hand it to him and only grinned wider at his confusion. "On the house. Just because."  
There was that just because again. 

Octavian opened his mouth, probably to question him again, but Leo shoved the pizza box into his hands and hurried on, "I was late anyway. I had some trouble with spelling." Leo seemed to enjoy that look of complete loss on Octavian's features, that look of 'Leo, what the actual fuck?' that he liked so much, and he laughed, "It makes sense, dude, trust me. Anyway, love to stay and chat, but I got to go. Duty calls. And like, get this, turns out you're not the only guy on campus that likes our pizza? Or maybe they haven't tried it yet?" He shrugged his shoulders, deciding it didn't matter.

Before Octavian could get another word in, Leo had turned on his heels and hopped down the stairs. He stopped when his sneakers hit the path and looked over his shoulder, "Yeah, so, I made that pizza extra special for you."

Octavian looked down at the box in his hands, crinkling his nose in further confusion. Extra special. Just for him. That never meant anything good. He looked up again, narrowing is eyes at the pizza boy, and he asked very seriously, "What'd you do to it?"

And Leo just laughed.

"How... What? What'd you do to it? I'm not going to eat this." 

"Just trust me!"

And with that, Leo went back to his idling gold junker, hopped in, and drove off.

Octavian slipped back inside, shutting the door with his hip, and stared warily at the pizza box in his hands. Just trust him, he'd said, like that was easiest thing in the entire world. How could he? In all his years at the university, he'd learned the hard way that there were many things he couldn't trust. The rival fraternity, which Leo was a part of, was one of them. 

Beware Greeks bearing gifts and all that. 

But he was curious, and ignoring all his inner turmoil, Octavian opened up the box and peered cautiously inside. Nothing jumped out at him. The pizza looked pretty normal except... 

He narrowed his eyes at the olive letters in the cheese, tilting his head to read them.

will u go on d8 w me??

\---

It was after midnight by the time Leo got home. After such a long day of fidgeting through every class he'd had and suffering through just about everything else, Leo was running on straight fumes. He sniffed his work shirt, making a face. Cheese and pepperoni fumes, apparently. He shucked off his uniform, throwing it all into various corners of his messy room before throwing himself into bed.

He lay awake for some time, eyes closed and arms resting beneath his head. All things considered, his day really hadn't been that bad. Sure, there were a lot of downs -- like sleeping through yet another 8 am class, or missing lunch because he'd lost track of time, or Festus, his beloved junker, wanting to call it quits for the umpteenth time this week, but there were some serious ups. The most up you could get without leaving orbit kind of up. Finally asking out that cute blonde in his buddy's frat that he'd had the biggest, dorkiest, most highschoolish crush on? Biggest up of the day.

Man, he wished he could have seen his face the moment he opened that bad boy up. Imagination was good and all but it couldn't compare to experiencing the full Octavian in real time. Had he been surprised? Overjoyed? Angry? Whatever it was, it was probably cute. Leo liked the way that little vein in his neck angrily throbbed, or the way his face sometimes got splotchy and red, or the way his lips curled into a shit-eating grin whenever he called Leo some nasty names...

He could marry that boy. 

Hold up, Valdez.

Back up. 

Marriage later. First date was the first step.

Leo blew air out the side of his mouth, crinkling his nose. Okay. The butterflies were starting to come back -- those same, stupid butterflies he got every time Octavian ended up on the other line, or when Octavian answered the door, acting like he wasn't excited to see him at all but still kept calling whenever he was on shift, or the way Octavian sometimes genuinely smiled at him... Calm down, Leo. He still had to say yes.  
Chances that he would were pretty good, he felt, but Octavian wasn't going to call him this late. He'd call him sometime tomorrow. Right now, all Leo had to do was sleep and get to tomorrow. Sleep now and the call will come faster...  
His phone will ring and he'll pick it up all suave and Octavian will be on the other end...

The call...

In an instant, Leo's eyes snapped open and he nearly launched himself right out of bed.

"FUCK!" 

You'd think that after all that time he'd spent aligning olives into words, he might have remembered to put his phone number somewhere on the box.


	2. Flirt Game has Mushroom for Improvement

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I forgot.

Waking up in the morning? Nearly impossible. Waking up that morning, greeted by the feeling of dread already settled in his stomach, like he'd had some kind of midnight anxiety snack-attack? Yeah. No, thanks.  
When his first alarm blared, telling him he'd had exactly an hour before his first class started, he blindly reached out and punched down the snooze button. And again when it went off five minutes later. And the next five minutes. And again, for about as many times he could get away with, before someone stomped their way into their room, smacked him ever-so rudely with their pillow, and stomped back out. 

Last call, Valdez. Now or never, and never really did sound tempting, but if he never got out of bed, he couldn't fix his massive fuck up from the night before. They didn't call him Repair Boy because he didn't fix things.

Now. He had to get out of bed now. With one last, tired groan, Leo pulled his face from his pillow. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, taking the time to adjust to the morning light streaming through his windows. He rolled onto his side, sat up, and pushed all of his blankets off him and onto the floor. Their home away from home, as he called it when anyone questioned it. He stretched, sighing with each satisfied pop of his joints, and turned to his alarm clock. 7:38 am... which meant he had 30 minutes to get ready and get to class. Easy peezy. He could be out the door, Pop-Tart in hand, in 7 minutes or less.

Now, as he pulled clean-ish clothes from his hamper, he devised a plan. 

Basically, it went as follows:

Suffer through 8 AM Calculus III. Which, by the way, was criminally early.  
Jet on over to Thermodynamics & Waves directly after. Suffer some more.  
And finish off the day with, 'You'd think after a year of being on this campus, I would have figured out where I am by now.' and the ever popular, 'Where the hell did I park my car?'  
After all that, and all the anxiety that came with it, he could fix his problem.  
Smoothing back his mop of messy curls, Leo smirked at himself at his reflection. Go time.  
Octavian... whatever his last name was, prepare to be romanced.  
\----  
By the mid-afternoon, Octavian had finished up all his classes and returned home to the Fraternity. As soon as he stepped through his bedroom entry, the very second the door closed behind him, he let an enormous sigh escape his chest, tossed his things onto the floor, and flopped facedown onto his bed.

Horrible. Today was horrible. Last night was horrible. Everything in his life was horrible. He turned his head to the side, blindly fishing his cellphone from his jean pockets. That whole ordeal with the pizza boy -- Leo, the pizza boy, hadn't been an easy one. Between how horrifyingly embarrassing the (literally) cheesy way he'd asked him out was and having to eat the entire thing before any of his housemates could see, Octavian had been up all night with a stomachache. He must have been getting sick, because he actually considered calling him and taking him up on the offer, before realizing he hadn't left a number to call.

Seriously, what kind of idiot doesn't leave their number?

Octavian stared at his blank phone screen, pressing his lips into a very thin and very displeased line. His stomach fluttered as his thumb brushed across his screen, bringing up his contacts. It must still be all that cardboard-y pizza wreaking havoc on his insides. Yeah, that's it. He scrolled through the list of numbers and names, mentally scolding himself because he knew better. Unlike someone else, he wasn't an idiot. 

Well... maybe he was, but at least he wasn't an idiot who forgot to leave his number.

He sighed, picking a number from his list, and pressing his phone to his ear. 

"Olympian Pizza, the only pizza good enough for Olympus. Can I help you?" An unfamiliar voice. Why wasn't he surprised?

"Hello... Is Leo there?"

"...Uh, no. He's not," There was the soft sound of a hand covering the receiver and hushed, indistinct whispers. Octavian could feel the warmth rush to his ears. He wasn't one to get embarrassed often, but even he realized that this was ridiculous. Ridiculous, but necessary. "Are you...calling to make a complaint?"

"Yes, I wasn't satisfied with my delivery last night." He realized that sounded harsh and quickly continued, "Look, it's fine. I want to settle this with him personally. Could you tell him to call me?"  
A pause from the employee on the other line, clearly at a loss for words. "...Uh,"

"Do you have a pen and paper? Write my number down."  
\----  
Last class of the day and it dragged on for an eternity. Leo wasn't sure how much more of the teacher's droning he could take, how many more doodles he could draw, or how much sanity he could keep all before the clock ticked down. Finally, the minutes rolled over to freedom o'clock and Leo had never bolted out of a classroom so damn fast. Haphazardly shoving his notebooks into his backpack, Leo walked straight across campus at unusual speed. Like, practically jogging. His little legs had never taken him so far so quickly.

After taking a couple of wrong turns here and there, the next task was finding where in the hell his car was parked. Like, where in the world is Festus san Diego? He scanned the parking lot, looking over other student's much nicer cars -- Sorry, he didn't mean that Festus, until he finally found his little pile of sweet scrap metal sitting in the sun.

Okay, Valdez. Time to go over the list. Classes? Check. Getting lost and found? Check. Finding where the hell he'd parked Festus? Check. Romancing the socks off that hot, blond frat boy? Eh...well, three out of four isn't too bad. He climbed into his hot car, being extra careful not to roast his ass on some hot leather seats. 

Festus decided to be finicky today, but after stalling a couple of times, finally rolled over and let Leo drive on down that road of love and right on up to that familiar Frat house he'd delivered a plain cheese and light sauce pizza to so many times before. He took a deep breath to simultaneously calm his nerves and to work himself up. Figure that one out. He smoothed back his messy curls and they bounced right back into place. He smoothed his brows, which thankfully, weren't too unruly. He smiled and clicked his tongue at himself in the mirror. 

Oh, yeah. The McShizzle would definitely knock him off his feet with his wit, charm, and dashingly decent looks and then, when Octavian was falling hard for him, he'd swoop him right up.  
Right. He just had to get on his feet and walk right up to that door...  
\----  
To come off as cool, casual and totally apologetic for forgetting his number was what Leo aimed for. What he did was bang a little too hard on the door and a little too much when he'd thought, hey, this is a big house and maybe Octavian hadn't heard him. He'd realized that wasn't the case when Octavian opened up the door seconds after his second set of rhythmic knocking. He looked grumpy, but when didn't he?  
Leo watched as the corner's of his lips pulled into a tighter frown, and he smiled more just to make up for it. "Heyyyy..." He struggled to find an appropriate pet-name for someone he wasn't dating just yet, "You."

Octavian raised an eyebrow, clearly unimpressed. 

"Did you get olive my text last night?" Keep it cool, Valdez, he thought, hit him with some jokes. "Was it extra cheesy?" All Octavian offered was a soft grunt in response, so Leo go to the point, "You may have noticed there wasn't a number on the box--"

"I did."

"Right, well, I forgot."

Octavian rolled his eyes at him, leaning up against the doorframe in an overly casual manner. Leo, awkward body language expert, could tell that Octavian was trying to play it cool, too. For his sake, he pretended not to notice. "How do you forget? Isn't that important? I mean, you don't expect me to order a pizza whenever I need to reach you, do you? I know I joke about you living there, but I don't think you actually live there."

Sure, Octavian was scolding him, but Leo just couldn't help but snort with laughter. "Oh, man. They'd never let me live that one down." Now that would earn him weeks of endless torment and teasing. He could see it now: Coworkers passing off the phone to him, telling him it's his lover boy on the line, and he'd probably fall for it once or twice and have to play it off like nothing went wrong.

"Mhm." Octavian cleared his throat, tugging absently at the collar of his sweater. "Anyway, how do you expect me to say yes if you don't give me your number? Send a pizza message back? Pass on a message to the Olympian Pizza gods?"

"That sounds sorta complicated. I was just going to ask, then maybe write my number on your--" Leo was a hopeful guy on the lookout for love, but he'd be lying if he'd said he didn't prepare for the worst, to brace rejection, every single time he asked someone out. So, it took some time to process what Octavian had just said to him. "...Did you say yes?"

"No, I said how do you expect me to say yes--" 

"So you're saying yes!"

"Not exactly."

"Dude, you so said yes. You want to go on a date with me, the Valdezinator. I'm going to romance the pants right off of you."

As much as he tried to hide it, to act cool and like he didn't really care whether or not the pizza boy liked him, Octavian's pale complexion was his downfall. Warmth flooded his skin, staining his cheeks red with embarrassment. "You can try," He hesitated briefly, "You have my number."

Octavian must have decided that he didn't have much more to say, because he turned around and shut the door in Leo's face. Maybe he would've cared more had the subject of his affection hadn't just agreed to have his pants romanced off of him.


End file.
